2023-08-08 0:48:18 ¶ ●

Hey I have only read TLT through my library but love it so much I want my own copies to reread. I saw that the additional short stories come out at the same time as the paperback editions, but are there versions that include them? Like Dr. Sex at the end of GTN? I ask bc I was looking at paperbacks in a bookstore and didn't see the short stories included but if it exists I'd rather buy those

hello anon! so I think this will depend on your country of residence. in the USA, paperback copies are released ~1 year after publication and for TLT, include a glossary and extra short story (GTN: sermon on cav and necros; HTN: As Yet Unsent; NTN: The Unwanted Guest). I believe the Ireland/UK paperbacks include the short stories and extras as well

however! I know in Australia, the paperbacks are released on the same day as the hardbacks, and so the short stories are not included. Not sure where you are located but this may be why the bookstore paperbacks near you don’t have them?

(Also, Dr. Sex is an online-only short story at this time, and I believe is not currently officially printed anywhere. Hope this helps!)

2023-08-14 23:39:59 ¶ ●

line drawing in a sketchy style of two rats wearing face paint in a pool. the rat on the right looks relaxed and ready to sink. the rat on the left has a determined look and is swimming.

what if you had just confessed the curse of your birth to me in a saltwater pool so i grabbed you and pulled you underwater and you thought you were being ritually drowned but i was actually only giving you a hug. and also we were both rats

2023-08-15 20:57:36 ¶ ● ⬈

theriverbeyond:

ALT
what if you had just confessed the curse of your birth to me in a saltwater pool so i grabbed you and pulled you underwater and you thought you were being ritually drowned but i was actually only giving you a hug. and also we were both rats

line drawing sketch of two rats facing each other on a table. Each holds a sewing needle in its mouth. The rat on the right looks fierce and scruffy, and a speech bubble from off stage says "Go Loud!". The rat on the left looks sleek and ready to fight, and a speech bubble from off stage says "To the mercy call!"

what if your necromancer challenged my necromancer to a duel via a clumsy intimidation tactic she assumed would end with me in disgrace and but my necromancer was confident that i would win so accepted the challenge. and also we were both rats

2023-08-16 8:28:58 ¶ ●

It really is all about the teeth in this series…. the teeth in Kiriona’s chest. The teeth in the roses John grew for his friends’ wedding, the teeth in Column’s eyes, the teeth lining the stoma. Teeth and love and eating. John on his knees, shoveling dirt into his mouth at the end of the world. Coronabeth, sobbing because she saw herself as a meal refused, Cam and Pal eating each other up and knawing on the bones. Harrow, on the terrace, cornered into consuming Gideon’s soul because otherwise it would have all been for nothing. Loving someone so much you eat them, you eat each other, you forcefeed yourself to them as they scream. Loving someone so much your love grows teeth. Crunch.

2023-08-19 1:52:43 ¶ ●

have you ever considered baby gideon nav with her favorite pillow. her favorite blankie. like u know no one in that house was hugging her so like. imagine baby gideon curled up under her one thin blanket on that terrible cot hugging her single, very lumpy pillow. oh my fucking god.

2023-08-20 23:22:35 ¶ ●

[verse 1] i feel lighter than i have in so much time / ive crossed the border lime of weightless / one deep breath out from the sky

She mentally found herself all of a sudden in front of the doors of Drearburh—four years old again, and screaming—and all her fear and hate of them went away. Drearburh was empty. There was no Crux. There were no godawful great-aunts. There were no restless corpses, no strangers in coffins, no dead parents. Instead, she was Drearburh. She was Gideon Nav, and Nav was a Niner name. She took the whole putrid, quiet, filth-strewn madness of the place, and she opened her doors to it. Her hands were not shaking anymore.

Once I had wondered what was holding up the ground / but I can see that all along, love, it was you all the way down

[pre chorus] and though i burn how could i fall? / when u am lifted up by every word you say to me

“Gideon the Ninth, first flower of my House,” she said hoarsely, “you are the greatest cavalier we have ever produced. You are our triumph. The best of all of us. It has been my privilege to be your necromancer.” That was enough.

[pre chorus] leave it now, i am sky bound / if you need to, darling, lean your weight to me

She lifted Harrow’s arm with the hilt clutched in it. Her fingers, rough and strong and sure, moved Harrow’s other hand into place above the pommel. “I know the sword,” she said. “And now, so do you.”

[intro] if the wind turns, if i hit a squall / allow the ground to find its brutal way to me

“For the Ninth!” said Gideon. And she fell forward, right on the iron spikes.

I, Carrion (Icarian) by Hozier // Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir

2023-08-21 19:43:32 ¶ ●

wire mother this cloth mother that. have you ever considered SWORD mother? provides no food nor comfort but can cause great injury to you and others 👍

2023-08-22 4:26:46 ¶ ●

hey good evening, as a keeper of TLT knowledge, do you know if anyone wrote a post detailing the personal pronouns used in the japanese translation? it can say a lot about a character but I haven't been able to hunt it down myself. I need to know if Gideon is a boku or an atashi person to the translator. it feels like too much to hope for ore even though that would annoy Harrow the most.

looks like according to these posts on reddit [source], the japanese translation uses atashi!

[other source]

for context, atashi s is a personal pronoun (like “i” or “my”) in japanese that is usually used by a person wanting sound more feminine/by women [source]. From a western understanding of butchness, this does seem like a bit of a miss by the translators, BUT!!! as someone not familiar with Japanese Butch Culture™ (or, frankly, Japanese culture in general) I would hesitate to pass judgement without knowing how butches/masculine lesbians in Japan refer to themselves/what they think of this.

(If anyone reading this is more familiar with Japanese butch/lesbian culture and wants chime in, I am interested to know how this reads to you!!)

2023-08-23 3:41:39 ¶ ●

Gideon Nav terrible fashion sense is so important to me babygirl has never been free to dress herself in her LIFE and i firmly believe that if she did have that freedom she would wear just. the most dogshit outfits. socks with slides. neon colors. shirts that say TITS with an arrow pointing down. outfits so bad every woman she meets is begging to take her on a department store makeover episode. outfits so bad you wonder if she got dressed in the dark upside down picking her clothing items by chaos potential. outfits so bad they wrap around to being sick as hell before winding back and punching you straight in the face

2023-08-25 10:36:38 ¶ ●

ok so I’m obsessed tonight about THIS John&Gideon parallel here:

NtN John 1:20 ->

He said, You were screaming. I wanted you to stop, I wanted … I wanted you. I wanted you like a caveman wants a wildfire … or the sun. I thought you were going to take me, somehow. Purge me. Use me as an instrument. But you didn’t say anything … I was babbling, Show me. Come on. I’m ready. You kept screaming and screaming …

HtN ch 48 ->

I spent all that time drowning and surfacing in you, over and over and over, and all because in the end you could not bear to do the one thing I asked you to do. I wanted you to use me, you malign, double-crossing, corpse-obsessed bag of bones, you broken, used-up shithead! I wanted you to live and not die, you imaginary-girlfriend-having asshole! Fuck one flesh, one end, Harrow.

John and Gideon both begging and pleading to be USED, to be taken, to be a conduit for greater things. and this was originally going to be a “girls when they are like their father” kind of post but the thing is, what immediately follows each quoted section is where Gideon DIVERGES from John. John begs to be used, and when there is no answer he lashes out. he gives up

like a baby in pain. So I tried to hurt you—I did hurt you. I reached out for you, and it hurt you … but I wasn’t strong enough. The caveman. The wildfire. The Neolithic priest staggering in front of the falling star.

he *lets go*, he lashes out, he hurts her, framing the rest of this sequence like it’s NOT his fault when it 100%, absolutley definitely IS. “one little nuke” like there even is such a thing. and nefarious use of the passive voice here, like all these nukes just… happened, like oh well. SAM sites opening up like wildflowers and not humans making decisions. he’s throwing in the towel!! nukes into nukes into nukes, like it wasn’t his fault the first one fired!!!!

He said, I let go. In the body they’d paid me to puppet, I gave the command. That command was heard round the world … so many men with so many fingers on so many buttons. The world went down in dominoes. Launch one nuke, you’ll get twenty thousand anti-air missiles in response. SAM sites open up all over the earth, like wildflowers. One little nuke … then a lot of bigger nukes … Christ, why’d we have ’em? Nukes into nukes into nukes. They came out of subs and bunkers and scrambled jets. The funny thing is, it was all to try to make the other ones stop firing … like an old comedy sketch.

which is UNLIKE, of course, Gideon, who when Harrow did not come back, did NOT lash out. she did not give up, instead reaffirming her devotion and drive to protect Harrow, even when she wasn’t there. even if Harrow may never come back. even if she still felt thrown away and betrayed.

already gave my flesh to you, and I already gave you my end. I gave you my sword. I gave you myself. I did it while knowing I’d do it all again, without hesitation, because all I ever wanted you to do was eat me.

whenever you're ready, i said. don't worry honey. i'll keeo the home fires burning

always your sword, my umbral sovereign; in life, in death, in anything beyond life and death that they throw at me and thee

and yknow, I’ve posted before about how Gideon’s suicidal devotion to Harrow is bad for her and it truly is SO bad for her but also like. she is already dead here. anyway Gideon Nav is her father’s daughter in so many ways but she is not like him in this!!! she is BETTER!!!! like what if John didn’t give up. what if in his rage and pain and grief he was able to do what his daughter did. what if he said ok, beloved, I’ll keep the home fires burning. what if he let the trillionares go. always your sword. whenever you’re ready.

anyway

2023-08-26 9:49:05 ¶ ●

some part of me must have died - Raxheim - The Locked Tomb Series | Gideon the Ninth Series - Tamsyn Muir [Archive of Our Own]

When the time comes, it’s almost… anticlimactic. The knife goes in, the blood comes out, the baby dies. And the rock remains unmoved.

my contribution to @tlt-monthly-prompts AUgust theme!!! what if Wake survived long enough to bring her newborn child to the tomb, and killed her. And then the baby did not die.

ft: Canon Typical Unkillable Baby Gideon Nav, Wake entering the ring as a strong contender in Worst Parents TLT Edition, and Gideon having perhaps the most horrible first 48 hours of existence one could have but like what if everything after that actually turned out better for her.

Rating: M (for violence) | 1.2k

2023-08-27 19:46:59 ¶ ●

tamsyn muir gives her most homoerotic of storylines to her most heterosexual of couples

2023-08-28 7:25:30 ¶ ●

An image of a husky dog holding a shower head, spraying water at a man soaked sitting fully clothed with his head in his hands. The husky dog is labled "Barnes & Noble releasing the Nona the Ninth paperback 2 weeks early", "Amazon's "look inside" feature", and "fans sharing pdfs photos and google drive links". The sad wet man is labled as "Tordotcom trying to keep a TLT short story secret until the official publishing date"

yeah

2023-08-30 4:47:45 ¶ ●

photograph of 2 hand-made books on a white sheet. they have black imitation leather covers. the cover is detailed in gold foil, with a wave design and a slightly abstract drawing of a whale. the title of the book is "Between the devil and the deep blue sea". the author's handle, "Pipistrelle", is listed at the top of the book

a veru similar photo as previous, except now you can see some of the spine. there are 4 hubs per book, with wave designs on the top and bottom. The author's handle, "Pipistrelle" is written again, as is the title of the fic "Between the devil and the deep blue sea". There is a drawing of a skull with IX on its forehead. Instead of crossed bones below it, an anchor and harpoon are crossed

detail shot of both spines of both books

Photo where one book is positioned to see the cover, while the other is opened to show the endpaper. The endpaper is art by iris-of-lambs, showing Gideon and Harrow on a boat, in a sea of blood. Gideon holds a bone spear and Harrow is blindfolded

chapter 1, titled "Moorings", with an illustration of an open book.

section breaks in the book are delineated by harpoon icons

Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea, by pipstrelle/ @neornithes

Endpaper art: Grody Maritime Necromancy by @iris-of-the-lambs

Being the journal of Reverend Daughter Harrowhark Nonagesimus, chronicling the journey of the Emperor’s warship Cenotaph on its hunt to slay an immortal Resurrection Beast.

or: THE MOBY DICK AU!! This fic has been an all time favorite of mine for so long, I am so excited to finally have been able to bind it!

Title font: AquilineTwo
Body font: Garamond
333 pages
Faux leather cover (Skivertex) with hand-embossed gold foil

Progress pictures/process under the cut!

The concept behind this fanbind is based on this specific special edition of Moby Dick by the Easton Press:

photo of the easton press edition of moby dick. it looks very similar to the book described above, complete with gilded gold details.

I did a TON of things for the first time on this bind much of it largely by winging it.

making the hubs (bumps on the spine)

the hubs being installed onto the spine of the book

first time rounding and backing (ft secret other binding project I can’t show yet) + printing it off in the library

stack of 4 books, and the title page for between the devil and the deep blue sea

installing the FANTASTIC endpaper art (SOOO nervewracking), plus a close up shot of how I got the center crease to land JUST to the left of Harrow’s face, which I’m super proud of.

detail shot of the endpaper by iris-of-lambs, as described above

foiling for days!! using the Easton Press edition as a guide, I mocked up a cover in MS Paint, then printed it off so I could foil it down. my hand was cramping but it was SO worth it!

the cover is tapen over with a printed out digitally rendered version. Also, a hand holds a heat embosser next to an in progress cover

and finally some unboxing pictures from the lovely writer!! so happy it arrived home safe and sound

the same book as before, now pictured against a wooden background and being held in a hand